Sunday, June 29, 2008

Went to Changi beach with a group of students a few day ago, and found this dead shark among the grass near the sandy beach.

Have no idea how this shark got onto the grass patch actually. Was it already dead and was washed ashore, after which a dog or some other animals pulled it onto the grass patch? Or was it caught by a fish eagle, which accidentally dropped it there? Or maybe an angler caught the fish, and accidentally dropped it or forgot to bring back? Hmm...

Anyway, its stomach was quite bloated and its head was also kind of out of shape. I didn't really try to take a longer look to examine it properly, as it was really stinking quite badly.

Another fish we saw was this catfish which was washed ashore. Have seen live catfishes washed ashore on several of my trips to Changi. Perhaps any fish experts out there can explain this phenomenon?

It was also a rather starry morning, and we saw 3 species of sea stars, including the sand star above.

This is probably a juvenile cake sea star.

And a little orange rock star!

There were also lots of sand dollars.

We found this black sea cucumber under a rock.

And also. a sandfish sea cucumber.

There were lots of soldier crabs on part of the sandy shore too.

And at the rocky area, there were several thunder crabs.

The tide wasn't really very low when we visited Changi Beach, but fortunately we still managed to see quite a few interesting stuff. Looking forward to visit it again soon when the tide is lower :)